In case you missed it in October: Welcome Firebase, local SSD opens for beta, lower prices and the final countdown to Google Cloud Platform Live

We want to make creating and scaling apps online easier than ever, so simplification was the name of the game for Google Cloud Platform in October. In case you missed it, here’s the scoop from the last month.

Welcome Firebase!
We welcomed Firebase to the Cloud Platform family in October in our efforts to provide developers the best experience to build as easily as possible. We’ll be demonstrating the new features at Google Cloud Platform Live next week, but in the meantime, read our welcome note and future plans.

The price is right, and simple
We started October with across-the-board price cuts on Compute Engine at Atmosphere Live. Following Moore’s Law, we cut prices by about 10% for all instance types. And because no one wants to spend time managing their billing information when they could be building the app of the future, we simplified the process of paying for Google Cloud Platform.

More Google Cloud Platform Live details
It’s just 4 days until Google Cloud Platform Live on November 4th. Though we’re sold out for seats in San Francisco and our watch-event in New York City, join in on the livestream and conversation on Google+, Twitter and elsewhere using #GCPLive.

From the department of semantics
We’re speeding our release process by aligning our phases with industry standard definitions that match how our developers manage their own projects. From now on, there will be no more “trusted tester,” “limited preview” and “preview” phases, just Alpha and Beta. For more details on the phases and our reasoning, read our blog post about it.

On the road again
October saw the completion of an epic Roadshow series, covering 35 cities worldwide and reaching nearly 4,500 developers from around the globe. Read our recap and relive the talks.

Great new customers
From Tel Aviv to Tokyo, we’re trying to enable developers around the world to deploy and scale in a flash. mCASH, a payment provider in Norway, uses App Engine to handle the manic growth of mobile transactions. Channel 2 News in Israel migrated its mobile app to Cloud Platform to cope with unexpected peaks in traffic. And Japan’s Medical Network Systems powers their remote-diagnosis system with Cloud Platform.

Stay tuned for next month’s announcements. Meantime, the Google Cloud Platform team wishes you all a Happy Halloween (timelapse-style)!